Kind of getting back to the concept I posted a couple of pics for before. I was trying to think of a way to do your basic boring action scene a bit different. The idea was to show the moment the shit hits the fan, so to speak, with some of the characters only beginning to react as a car is about to smash into the roadblock. Not sure if it's very clear what's happening, one idea was to have another image showing the aftermath, probably in daytime. Now that I look at the mess I made of the light cast by the headlights, though, I kind of prefer the version with all the characters in shadow. The image turned too cliché with the high-tension foreground. Better sleep on it and think about it again - comments appreciated.

Last edited by Affected on Wed Aug 20, 2008 3:01 pm; edited 2 times in total

very nice work so far.. i especially like the mood of the background buildings. darkening them was a good decision. somethings bothering me with the scale/position of the three guys.. scaling looks inconsistent.. either the front guy is too small or the background guys are too large.. (at least compared to the perspective of your buildings)

Thanks for the tips! Turns out the front guy really was out of perspective, and not just a little. I also bit the bullet, dug up my 500W lamp and took some reference photos for the light... I guess it doesn't pay to do things the hard way.

This is more or less done:

I'm having a bit of trouble calibrating my display correctly, it looks a lot less contrasty here than it does on other computers. Tried to compensate a bit with curves and levels, but I have no idea if I succeeded.

On my screen the atmosphere now feels more like twilight.
However the top of the gate and the top of the wall in the foreground seem very dark considering the amount of light they should get from the sky.

Also the lightning on the left guy doesn't seem to match the cast shadow on the wall. So you may either move the lightsource and put that part of the wall in shadow, or either light up a bit the side of the character.

I really like the lighting on the first guy's face and his overall expression, and maybe that's why I feel the other two behind him don't relate to what he is seeing. There's this eery calmness in the background scene that's very different to what's going on in the foreground, which i guess also made things rather interesting.
cool composition in the second one, I like the clean rendering on the car, it's really well done. You'll have to fix the car door but for some reason I like the way it completes the horizon lines; almost like I am seeing through it.
good work and keep us posted!

Thanks for the comments. That door is, indeed, angled forward. It was on purpose, even, but now that I actually stop to think about it, it doesn't make any sense. Oh well, I'll cheat and apply a bit of free transform.

Meanwhile, working on the next pic. I don't know what I was thinking with the composition, setting up a focal point and putting nothing in it: